Ethan: It could be better—I need to make it better. I haven’t always agreed with the way he chose to live his life but I see now that I should have stayed and made sure he was alright, instead of taking my help where it was wanted. I don’t intend to let him down like that again.

Susana: You mention you took your help where it was wanted…so what’s your occupation?

Ethan: I kind of have two! I own a chain of deluxe leisure facilities called Love Leisure that funds the work that takes up the majority of my time—I also work for a charity that provides disaster relief. I go to whichever disaster zone I’m deployed to and help provide shelter, water, food, etc.’

Susana: That sounds very rewarding but I imagine it could also be dangerous?

Ethan’s gorgeous blue eyes take on a shrewd, assessing look.

Ethan: Crossing the road can be dangerous.

Susana: True but I can’t help noticing your shoulders have tightened a little there, Ethan.

Ethan: I’m fine. Next question.

Susana: Okay, tell me your first impressions of Nora King?

A warm throaty chuckle fills the air.

Ethan: A princess in skyscraper heels with defiant fiery button-brown eyes and the dreamiest, creamiest, palest of complexions.

Susana: Wow. A case of instant attraction?

Ethan leans forward in his seat as if to let me in on a secret.

Ethan: There’s definitely something about Nora that sort of slams into me and leaves me a little breathless.

Susana: I’ve heard it’s pretty much impossible to distract Nora King from her work—she’s a complete workaholic, isn’t she?

Ethan: Don’t be so sure about that. Even with the business-as-usual façade she wears, I can see the struggle she’s trying to survive underneath. How she can’t quite hide the fact that grief over losing her father has stripped her bare and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Susana: You’re saying she might need a little help at the moment?

Ethan: I’ve seen that same hollowed-out shocked look on people’s faces when their worlds explode and they’re left trying to rebuild what they can. If I can help her out while I’m here, I will.

Susana: Sounds like you kind of have a thing for helping people.

Ethan: Do you find something wrong with that?

Susana: I guess I’m wondering who helps you?

Ethan: I don’t need help. I am the guy that does the helping.

Susana: Apart from you needing Nora’s help, of course…

Ethan shifts uncomfortably.

Ethan: Right. Apart from that.

Susana: Back to the tightening of those impressive shoulders of yours—want to share, now?

Ethan: I really don’t and I really won’t.

Susana: Hmm, you know I’m wondering if you’re not thinking that Nora would be the perfect distraction from whatever it is that has those shoulders of yours tensing up?

Ethan: Did I mention Nora has this old-school “haughty” thing going on that I find completely sexy and that she has these big button eyes the colour of dark good-for-your-heart chocolate…

About The Love List

Falling in love is just not on Nora King’s To Do List…

Neither is accidentally super-gluing her shoe to her hand right before the biggest presentation of her life! With all the hard work she’d put into securing the family business after her father’s death, Nora has no choice but to accept help from a knight in shining armour.

Disaster relief worker Ethan Love is still haunted by his last deployment, and desperate for distraction. He’s in town to ask Nora for a major favour, and swooping in to save her presentation is a sure way to get her on side.

As Ethan sticks around and helps Nora through her grief, her barriers tumble down…but will she dare to swap her To Do lists for a How to Fall in Love list?

Excerpt

And if it helped burn off the latent energy so that maybe at some point later today he’d be able to sleep, even better.

Probably after he got some sleep things would go back to feeling simple and he’d stop worrying that his boss was going to judge him negatively for something any decent person would have done.

Realising he’d left his other bag behind, he called out, ‘Can you pop through to reception and pick up my garment bag, take out the blue suit and bring it to me?’

‘What did your last slave die of?’

Ethan looked in the mirror, liking how her harrumphed tone put the twinkle back in his eyes. ‘Happiness when I came out of the bathroom naked to fetch my own clothes?’

As he started removing jacket, top and jeans, he tried to make out more dark mutterings from the other side of the door before it was opened a notch and his clothes were pushed through the tiny gap and dumped on the chair inside the door. A few seconds later the door opened a little bit wider and she mumbled, ‘There was no tie in your bag.’

‘Oh, yeah. Don’t use them.’ He had no problem meeting her curious gaze and as her eyes dropped lower to take in his chest and the ink that wrapped around his right pectoral and shoulder, his grin grew impossibly wider. ‘Too restrictive.’

She shut the door firmly between them.

He chuckled. He might be suffering from insomnia, but even the fug of running on empty hadn’t diminished the spark of attraction between them.

About the Author

I kind of secretly believe it’s not too late for me to train as a professional dancer, MMA expert, or get asked to be Angelina Jolie’s body-double. I know. This is why writing fiction is for me!

Growing up in locations like Botswana and Venezuela gave me quite the taste for adventure and my love for romances began when my mother shoved one into my hands in a desperate attempt to keep me quiet during TV coverage of the Wimbledon tennis finals.

When I wasn’t consuming books by the bucketload, I could be found pretending to be a damsel in distress or running around solving mysteries and writing down my adventures. As a teenager, I wrote countless episodes of TV detective dramas so the hero and heroine would end up together every week. As an adult, I worked in a library to conveniently continue consuming books by the bucketload, until realising I was destined to write contemporary romance and romantic suspense myself. I live in leafy Surrey in the UK, a book-devouring, slightly melodramatic, romance-writing sassy heroine with my very own sexy hero husband!